The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.

Take a job that you love. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Confidence comes from a place of abundance and wealth. It gives us the courage and freedom to move forward, to ask for help, to ask for more, to ask for what you deserve. To be able to begin before you’re ready and have the willingness to fail. And to be cool with failure as well.

The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore, the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance. [...]

The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself. Is he scared? Hell, yes. He’s petrified. [...]

So if you’re paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.

For the most part, the things we’re afraid of happening as a result of our failures aren’t actually that bad. Now this doesn’t really apply to all things (tightrope walking and skydiving come to mind) but if you’re honest, you’ll probably agree that the fear of failure is worse than actual failure. I’m still really afraid of public speaking, but when I think it through, it’s silly to be so afraid of it. The worst thing that can happen is to make a fool out of myself. I literally do that everyday anyway, so what’s so bad about doing it once more? Maybe if I actively tried to swallow my pride and face my fear of humiliation head on, I’ll have little to fear when I actually try something new. Just a thought.

Have you ever asked a friend who’s an artist or entrepreneur how they’re doing on a project you know they’re psyched about? Sometimes you get the answer,

“I’m getting ready to start on it.”
“I’m working up the outline.”
“I’ve almost got the business plan.”
“I’ve got a little more research to do.”

When Resistance hears phrases like that, it can hardly contain its glee. Resistance knows that the longer we noodle around “getting ready,” the more time and opportunity we’ll have to sabotage ourselves. Resistance loves it when we hesitate, when we over-prepare.

Grandiose fantasies are a symptom of Resistance. They are the sign of an amateur.
The professional has learned that success,
like happiness, comes as a by-product of work.
The professional concentrates on the work
and allows rewards to come or not, whatever they like.

Think about the things that you want to do and write them down. Then look at these things and identify the things that you really want to do, and write these down. And from those things, identify the things that you really, really want to do, and then go ahead and do it. You know, life is short. We don’t have that much time. And it’s too short to do what we feel that we have to do; it’s barely long enough to do what we want to do.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

4. Write, blog, and speak on that topic
You’re an expert once you feel comfortable calling yourself an expert. Take Jakob Nielsen, who began blogging about usability back in the late 1990s. He became recognized as the source on usability because he was consistently churning out information on the topic. Were there other experts on usability? Sure. But Nielsen developed the early point of view, and wrote provocatively about the subject.

10. Model or draw (all the f*@#ing time)
To be good at anything, you need to do it a lot. And to be really, really good, you need to do it all the time. I don’t care how great an idea is, if you can’t model it, prototype it, or draw it, then you’re screwed. If you learn nothing else from this blog post, please find a way to learn how to make your ideas tangible. This can be through graphic design, sketching and rendering in Alias, a flash prototype, photography, video, whatever. Just learn the tools of the tangible.

Writing is chasing a question—an inquiry of the mind. Forward is better than every direction at once. It’s not really writing until you feel something; until you choke up at a thought, until you start fidgeting in your seat in excitement, until you feel the twinge of pain that happens when a thorn is pulled out of your side. Go back. Delete everything before you started fedgeting or crying of deflating like a balloon. Then, write some more.
Go write.

When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I wrote down “happy”.
They told me I didn’t understand the assignement and I told them they didn’t understand life.

If you want to work on big things, you seem to have to trick yourself into doing it. You have to work on small things that could grow into big things, or work on successively larger things, or split the moral load with collaborators. It’s not a sign of weakness to depend on such tricks. The very best work has been done this way. When I talk to people who’ve managed to make themselves work on big things, I find that all blow off errands, and all feel guilty about it. I don’t think they should feel guilty. There’s more to do than anyone could. So someone doing the best work they can is inevitably going to leave a lot of errands undone. It seems a mistake to feel bad about that.
I think the way to “solve” the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you. Work on an ambitious project you really enjoy, and sail as close to the wind as you can, and you’ll leave the right things undone.

The greatest form of education, whatever field it may be design, education, economics, science or what not, occurs when you have the fortune of meeting great people. Period. You will find great people by being earnest in your work, humble in attitude, and doing your best in all situations. You will find great people by taking the inspiration you have received from others, and unselfishly generating new inspirations to add to the pool of common knowledge. But most importantly, you will find great people by believing that there can be greatness somewhere in the world.

Pay attention to the people in your life because relationships are the only true wealth. Tell your loved ones how much they mean to you. Write a letter, make a phone call, or send an email. Don’t wait. Show your love today.

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as I live it is my privilege – my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I love. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got a hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

The very best form of self-promotion is celebration. To celebrate is to share the joy of what you do (and critically also celebrate what others do) and invite folks to participate in the party. To show off is a weakness of character — an act that demands acknowledgement and accolade before the actor can feel the tragic joy of thinking themselves affirmed. To celebrate is to share joy. To show-off is to yearn for it.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Tomorrow you visit the doctor and find out you have a life-threatening illness. There’s no cure. Nobody knows how much longer you have to live. It could be a few weeks. It could be a few months. It could be a few years. Possibly longer. The only thing that’s certain is that you will die. You won’t experience any physical pain as a result of the illness. One day you’ll just go to sleep and you won’t wake up again. If this happened to you, how would you change your life? What would you do right away? What would you do after that? The answer to those questions is what you should be doing right now.

Ultimately, my whole approach to what I do is 95% effort and 5% talent. I really see it as a sport. You probably won’t become a tennis player if you don’t stand on the court for six hours a day and whack balls over the net. And if you do that, you have to be incredibly untalented for it not to work. But I think it’s tempting to think as a creative professional, you sit there and you’re creative. So much of it is just doing it everyday for hours.

Every day, we lose another 1,440 minutes that will never return. [...]
The other day I noticed I had been thinking “I’ll do that in the summer” about a lot of things. Then I realized, hey, it’s late August already… seriously? How did that happen? However it works, time marches on.

This is a friendly reminder to stop living mindlessly. Spend your days in pursuit of joy and adventure. Help someone and create something that will endure. The end is (always) near.

Routines give us structure, and this is good for creativity too. Whether it’s writing for 30 minutes every morning or meeting with friends once a week to brainstorm business ideas, these rituals tell our brains and bodies to get into a specific mode at a certain moment. It’s like your subconscious saying “okay left-brain, you turn off for a little while and let right-brain do it’s thing.” Routines get us into a rhythm and allow us to shift from thinking to doing. Routines help us make shit happen.

The zen monk and the samurai swordsman often lead lives so unadorned they’re almost invisible. Musashi Miyamoto’s dojo was smaller than my living room. Externals became superfluous. In the end he didn’t even need a sword.

The amateur is an egotist. He takes the material of his personal pain and uses it to draw attention to himself. He creates a “life,” a “character,” a “personality.” (This is not to say that Lady Gaga is not an artist; she is.)

There are different species of laziness: Eastern and Western. The Eastern style is like the one practised in India. It consists of hanging out all day in the sun, doing nothing, avoiding any kind of work or useful activity, drinking cups of tea, listening to Hindi film music blaring on the radio, and gossiping with friends. Western laziness is quite different. It consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so there is no time at all to confront the real issues. This form of laziness lies in our failure to choose worthwhile applications for our energy.

Confess to yourself in the deepest hour of the night whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. Dig deep into your heart, where the answer spreads its roots in your being, and ask yourself solemnly, must I write?

When we’re acting as amateurs, we’re running away from our calling — meaning our work, our destiny, the obligation to become our best and truest selves. This is where addiction comes in. Addiction becomes a surrogate for our calling. We enact the addiction instead of embracing the calling. Why? Because to follow a calling requires work. It’s hard. It hurts. It demands entering the pain-zone of effort, risk and exposure.

Both addict and artist are dealing with the same material, which is the pain of being human and the struggle against the self-sabotage of Resistance. But the addict/amateur and the artist/professional deal with these elements in fundamentally different ways.

(When I say addiction, by the way, I’m not referring only to the conventional vices of alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic abuse and so forth. Web-surfing counts too. So do texting, sexting, twittering, facebooking; not to mention living on your iPad, dancing with the stars, and keeping up with the Kardashians.)

Lengthier writing is hard, because it requires one to commit to it. One must be alone. One can not write in a group. One must step away, shut off the world. What do I think? How do I feel? What is this itch? How can I scratch it? Why am I sad? Why did this make me happy? What’s it like being a father? Why did that project work? What did I learn?

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered:
Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.

Consider what the majority of designers do to promote themselves in this brave new maker-creative culture. People like my friend, Elliot Jay Stocks: making his own magazine, making music, distributing WordPress themes, and writing about his experiences. Yes, it is important for him that he has an audience, and yes, he wants us to buy his stuff, but no, he won’t try to impress or trick us into liking him. It’s our choice.

You cannot suppress the worst tendencies of a show without suppressing its best, because they come from the same place. Put another way: you have to be willing to suck if you ever want to be great. “Awesome” and “awful” are actually closer to each other on the continuum of quality than either is to “meh”.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.
The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

I think a lot of the problems we’ve been experiencing come from the fact that no one embraces the miracle and amazement of the present. So many people—steampunks, fundamentalists, hippies, neocons, anti-immigration advocates—feel like there was a better time to live in. They think the present is degraded, faded, and drab. That our world has lost some sort of “spark” or “basic value system” that, if you so much as skim history, you’ll find was never there. Even during the time of the Greeks, there were masses of people lamenting the passing of some sort of “golden age.” But I’d never go back and live in any other time than teetering on tomorrow; this is the greatest time to be alive.

People who keep a gratitude journal, who each night before going to sleep write at least five things for which they are grateful, big things or little things, are happier, more optimistic, more successful, more likely to achieve their goals, physically healthier; it actually strengthens our immune system, and are more generous and benevolent toward others. This is an intervention that takes three minutes a day with significant positive ramifications.

Obviously, you need to get the right amount of perspective. The best tool for that, I’ve found, is a famous principle of Stephen Covey’s: begin with the end in mind.
And here’s how he tells us to do that:
By imagining what we’d like people to say about us at our funeral. Do we want them to say that we were kind-hearted, or charitable, or loving, or successful, or that we accomplished great things, or found a cure for cancer? However we want to be remembered, that’s how we should live our lives, every moment of every day, starting right now.

I think writer’s block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out.

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.
Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

1. Be authentic. The most powerful asset you have is your individuality, what makes you unique. It’s time to stop listening to others on what you should do.
2. Work harder than anyone else and you will always benefit from the effort.
3. Get off the computer and connect with real people and culture. Life is visceral.
4. Constantly improve your craft. Make things with your hands. Innovation in thinking is not enough.
5. Travel as much as you can. It is a humbling and inspiring experience to learn just how much you don’t know.
6. Being original is still king, especially in this tech-driven, group-grope world.
7. Try not to work for stupid people or you’ll soon become one of them.
8. Instinct and intuition are all-powerful. Learn to trust them.
9. The Golden Rule actually works. Do good.
10. If all else fails, No. 2 is the greatest competitive advantage of any career.

Lack of confidence, sometimes alternating with unrealistic dreams of heroic success, often leads to procrastination, and many studies suggest that procrastinators are self-handicappers: rather than risk failure, they prefer to create conditions that make success impossible, a reflex that of course creates a vicious cycle.

If you want to know who your real friends are, start telling your craziest idea to everyone you meet. Some people will slowly back away from you as if you really are crazy, but others will latch on to your idea and help you any way they can. The people in the second group are your real friends.

Make two lists: your ideal day, and all the things that fill up your day (all your commitments). Start by eliminating commitments that are not essential, that don’t make up your ideal day — call or email people and tell them you can no longer commit to the commitment, that you don’t have the time. People will be disappointed but will live.

Self aware, including weaknesses. This is the kicker. Great leaders know what they suck at, and either work on those skills or hire people they know make up for their own weaknesses, and empower them to do so. This tiny little bit of self-awareness makes them open to feedback and criticism to new areas they need to work on, and creates an example for movement in how people should be growing and learning about new things.

Fear is epic. Whatever it is that scares you, you’ve simply just got to want it bad enough — bad enough that the pain of NOT moving forward is greater than the pain of taking action. Doing this will give you no other choice but to rally every single cell of your body, mind, heart, and soul to move forward and fight for it — honorably, and with conviction. And then make it yours.

Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.

What, in your opinion, makes designer a good designer? What is of utmost importance in this profession?
If you ask me, good graphic design can never be the easy way. Always doubt your decisions. Force yourself to do things you wouldn’t normally dare to do. Don’t ever feel confortable about your work, even if it has reached a wider acceptance, keep questioning its relevance. Basically, don’t expect anything from your achievements. Don’t try too hard to be original, instead, try to be consequent, clear and honest to yourself. Don’t ever base your work solely on visuals and aesthetics. Don’t refer to or base your work on famous great artists or movements, create your own logic. Don’t aspire to be avant-garde. Don’t perceive graphic design only as a service to satisfy a client, and don’t ever work to only surprise your client — always try to surprise yourself. Most importantly: Don’t ever be SERIOUS!

The longer you’re a bad listener, the smaller your world gets and the narrower your mind becomes, because you’re not exposing yourself to different ideas and perspective. The better you become at listening, the more of the world you’ll see, and the world knows a lot more than you.

But conditions are never perfect. And when we’re so focused on our plans, we lose sight of the openings in front of us. Instead of plans we need habits. Habits of taking risks. Habits of keeping our eyes open for new opportunities. Habits of putting ourselves in situations that force us to grow and change.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about living a life it’s that you need to keep moving, and if there’s another thing it’s that you really should quit your job every once in a while and take on something new, maybe even something that seems crazy and scares the hell out of you.

When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.